Remaking Our Organisations

Permaculture’s journey......towards Permaculture version 3.0

PERMACULTURE is a synthesis of ideas... a simultaneous existence of

ideas old and new... traditional and contemporary that sometimes

steps boldly onto new ground and at other times seeks the safety of

the tried and proven.

Smaller scale organisations in permaculture have for the most part

taken the latter path, yet, seen as a social movement, permaculture

has taken on a different structure that we will explore in this paper.

Doing this has not been due to any deliberate decision. It is an

outcome of permaculture’s evolution.

It is this evolution that may yet see the emergence of larger scale

organisations within permaculture, organisations at the regional, state

or national scale. What sort of organisation would these be? And,

true to its traditions, should they be a new type of organisation in

permaculture?

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REMAKING OUR ORGANISATIONS

Alternative structures for permaculture

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ContentsForward: Towards Permaculture version 3.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

The search for the new and better . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Basis of a proposed new model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

1 . Permaculture: a localised practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

That which exists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

That which could have been . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Proposal for a different future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Permaculture’s different path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

2. The structure of permaculture: a mesh of networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

An artifact of education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Permaculture as an array of networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

The networks of permaculture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

An array of entities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Graduate numbers—no correlation to active participation in networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Hierarchies in permaculture’s network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Closely connected and insulated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

The importance of connectors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Participation = viability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

How to relate? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

3. Looking for a model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

What type of organisation? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

What structure? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

The importance of culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

The hybrid culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Learnings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

The inspiration of flatness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Openness and radical transparency. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Intellectual property — a persistent dilemma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

4. Outline of a new model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

A thought experiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

5. Requirements of a new structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Permaculture—remaking our organisat ions, Autumn 2013 3

“THAT ’S WHAT WE ’RE DO ING in

h i s to ry ; ca l l i t t he i nvent i on o f

pe rmacu l tu re.

“By pe rmacu l tu re I mean a cu l tu re

that can be sus ta ined pe rmanent ly.

No t unchanging, t hat ’ s imposs ib l e,

we have to s tay dynamic , because

cond i t i ons w i l l change, and we

w i l l have to adap t to those new

cond i t i ons , and con t i nue to t ry to

make th ings even be t te r — so that I

l i ke to th i nk the word pe rmacu l tu re

imp l i es a l so pe rmutat i on .

“We w i l l make adaptat i ons, so change

i s i nev i t able. ”

( S i x ty Days And Count i ng )

Kim Stan ley Rob inson ,

sc ience f i c t i on au tho r,

Vi l l age Homes, Dav i s , Ca l i fo rn i a .


Forward: Towards Permaculture version 3.0

The search for the new and better

THIS PUBLICATION outlines ideas for the

structuring of larger-scale organisations within

permaculture. They would form part of a new

iteration of the permaculture design system,

Permaculture Version 3.0.

Permaculture usually self-organises at the level

of the community association. Although it is

larger scale organisations that is the focus of

this paper, perhaps the gist of these newer

organisational ideas could also be applied at

the association level.

I acknowledge that there are people who

are happy to make use of conventional

organisational structures and that these

structures can work. They can also be

something of a turn-off. I’ve been a member of

advocacy and community-based organisations

full of smart people who have unquestioningly

adopted what they are familiar with, and

that has been formal and tried organisational

and meeting structures. Sometimes, I’ve seen

those structures turn away potential members

because they found them stultifying and

boring. The organisation and its important goals

was the loser.

My experience in the voluntary community

sector, in non-government organisations

designing and implementing projects, in


social enterprise and in small business and

local government leads me to believe that

those conventional structures sometimes

leave much to be desired when it comes to

effective decision making and to organisational

governance. There has been a disconnect

between how those entities worked and

what participants with a more innovative and

informal mindset would have preferred.

Whatever the organisational structure adopted,

it has become clear to me that it is often poor

communication, the making of assumptions

and a general lack of people skills and process

among the leadership that alienates people.

This leads to feelings of unease that, at some

point, can lead to valuable people leaving an

organisation.

Today, business, some voluntary community

associations and even large corporations are

searching for and experimenting with different

organisational and decision-making structures

to find something that gives them the agility to

deal with rapid change.

Businesses face competitive pressures that drive

change but — like government —community-

based organisations do not unless another

community association sets up to do the same

thing. It is this competitive pressure that can

make innovative business more experimental

than community groups. It is ironic that groups

pressing for social change can be bastions of

old, conservative organisational structures that

are not only tired, but that are really expired.

I believe that permaculture can do no better

than to join those organisationally-innovative

entities that are seeking better ways to do their

work.

PERMACULTURE evolvesThat evolution started in the late-1970s when

Bill Mollison and David Holmgren published

Permaculture One1 after which Bill gathered

a small band of early adopters around him by

offering the first permaculture design courses

in Tasmania. That, the period between

1978 and the early 1980s, we might call

Permaculture Version 1.0. It was the time of

the innovators.

The 1980s brought a slow diffusion of

the permaculture idea through society’s

innovative fringe, then in the 1990s the design

system went through a boom. Let’s call this

period Permaculture Version 2.0.

We are now riding the long tail2 of

Permaculture 2.0, working with ideas and

developments within the design system that

emerged from the mid-1990s and on into the

first decade of the new century.

Some now argue that global and local

circumstances have changed so much, are so

different to those of permaculture’s earlier

times, it is time to move onto a new iteration

of the permaculture design system that we

could call Permaculture Version 3.0. This

new version would seek to scale-up the

application of permaculture, to broaden the

areas where it is applied and to influence and

gain the participation of social institutions.

To do this it would be necessary to introduce

new ideas to the design system, to update

its content and courses and to step into new

territory.

1 Tagari Publishers, Tasmania.

2 An idea about the structure of markets developed by Chris Anderson, past editor of Wired magazine, in which value is derived over the longer period by continued sales of existing rather than new products


THIS IS an ideas paper about the structure of

larger scale representative and other forms of

organisations in permaculture, however the

ideas may be applicable to other organisations.

The paper should be read as a broad concept

document. It does not provide detail as to

how any proposed model would be achieved

or how existing legal structures would be

integrated with any proposed model. Those are

subsidiary things.

Motivation

My motivation in writing is to see the

permaculture design system positioned to:

become more widely accepted as a valid mm

approach to landuse and community

development by local and state government

to increase the effectiveness and efficiency mm

of permaculture and other sustainability-

oriented agencies

assist the move towards creating livelihoods mm

based on the permaculture design system

for those graduating from Accredited

Permaculture Training

assist organisations be perceived as mm

adopting new ideas that offer real

alternatives to organisational structure

as befitting those that would reform the

business-as-usual approach.

I’ve been influenced by a number of ideas

in producing this paper including those from

conversations with people experienced in

establishing and managing community-

based organisations, employment with non-

government organisations, in local government

and in the voluntary community sector. As well,

I’ve been exposed to the ideas of recognised

organisational thinkers such as Charles Handy,

Peter Senge and those of social entrepreneur,

Ernesto Sirolli.

This is an exploratory paper that proposes

larger scale organisations emerging within the

permaculture/sustainability milieu might do

well to reflect the characteristics of the design

system — decentralisation, local structures,

reliance on small group action, operational

agility.

I start by looking at permaculture as it

presently exists, compare it to another entity

that emerged around the same time but that

followed a different trajectory then go on to

outline the characteristics of an alternative

structure.

Summary

Zone 1


Basis of a proposed new model

The model I discuss is influenced by:

permaculture’s existence as an mm array of geographically decentralised nodes

consisting of organisations, small businesses/

social enterprise and individuals across

Australia that are linked by flows of

information; this could be a model for

larger organisations that would enable

them to closely accord with and reflect

permaculture’s de facto organisation at the

national scale

the structure of mm systems and networks as

revealed through science

organisational thinker and educator, Peter mm

Senge, and his ideas on systems thinking in organisations and of the learning

organisation

organisational thinker and educator, mm

Charles Handy, and his idea of the federal organisation

the idea of social entrepreneur, Ernesto Sirolli mm

of the Sirolli Institute (author of Ripples in the

Zambezi), who, while I was working at the

City of Sydney, validated the role of the

organisational worker (local government

staff in the case in mention) as civic

entrepreneurs who enable and assist citizen

projects to happen; translocated, this social

entrepreneurial model might be adopted by

individuals within larger scale permaculture

organisations

the model of the mm virtual organisation in

which project teams come into existence

as needed, do their work then dissolve until

their members reconstitute as new project

teams for new projects, coordinated but not

directly managed by an ongoing core team

(much like TerraCircle Inc with which I am

affiliated)

the management model of the mm flat organisation in which chains of command

and control are minimised

the model of the mm temporary, self-organising team

the mm Mondragon cooperatives of Spain’s

Basque region and the idea of the

Mondragon Accord of Kim Stanley Robinson

(Kim Stanley Robinson is a thinker and

science fiction writer living in Village Homes,

Davis, California, who is a supporter of

permaculture); the Mondragon model

consists of cooperatives owned by the

people who work in them, that operate semi-

autonomously and that support each other

through trade and other arrangements as a

structure of nested businesses.

Zone 5


LET ME RECALL a recent conversation with

a couple people — one long-established in

permaculture, the other relatively new. The

discussion was stimulated by the observation,

the proposition, that it is mainly a dedicated

core that make things happen in permaculture.

The unstated notion was that permaculture was

changing. Once, said one of the protagonists,

greater numbers of members would have

been involved in planning and organising

the permaculture association’s activities, but

now most were content to let a small group

organise things and then to attend them. His

questions: Are we seeing a consumer culture

evolving within permaculture? Is participation

in making things happen devolving into the

managerialism of an active few organising for

the passive many?

This is not a recent phenomenon. Essentially,

it’s how the third iteration of Permaculture

Sydney1 operated in the late 1990s and its

weakness is demonstrated by the protracted

collapse of that organisation as the few

doing all of the work burned out. Burnout is a

common phenomenon in voluntary community

organisations and one that must be guarded

against if organisations are to remain viable.

It happens when an organisation takes on

projects that are too ambitious and that are

beyond the capacity (the time, energy and

resources) of those doing them. It happens

when too few people are left with too much to

do to keep the organisation and its activities

running.

1 There have been four iterations of Permaculture Sydney since the 1980s.

I don’t know if those questions coming from

that conversation reported above signify a

real trend. I do know that the law of the few2

applies in permaculture, however — that it’s the

motivated few who make things happen for the

many. The questions were less about the reality

that it’s the comparative few who organise

things and more about the number of that few.

I think the conversation signified that people

were becoming aware that permaculture was

changing but that there were few forums within

permaculture in which internal questions like

this can be addressed. The lack of such a forum

has been noted over the years and comparison

drawn with other organisations and professions.

None of the permaculture email discussion lists

of social media have featured any substantial

attempt to reflect on practice.

Whatever the truth might be, the conversation

was a reflection on the state of permaculture

today.

That which exists

In proposing change, a good place to start is to

look at what already exists as this could give us

ideas on what could be.

Permaculture in Australia has evolved an

informal networked structure for a number of

reasons:

because of the wide geographic distribution mm

of its adherents and their need to

communicate ideas and news

2 The concept of Malcolm Gladwell in his book, The Tipping Point, describing how ideas spread through the work of connectors and knowledgeable enthusiasts.

1. Permaculture: a localised practice


because permaculture people display mm

homophily — the tendency to associate with

the like-minded; traditionally in permaculture

this has led to the formation of community

associations which, in terms of network

studies, become nodes and hubs

because of the notion of acting locally with mm

whatever resources are at hand.

This structure is an outcome of permaculture’s

evolution — that is, it was unplanned

and emerged from the mashup of local

organisational capacity, local focus, reaction

to local, national and global trends, the churn

of ideas within the national permaculture milieu

and other factors.

That which could have been

Could permaculture have created a different

structure? Yes, it could have. The sparse records

left by the first batch of permaculture early

adopters who did Bill Mollison’s first courses at

Stanley in northern Tasmania — as the decade

of the 1980s opened — record the idea that

permaculture could have replicated itself using

a structure quite like franchising.

This alternative but unrealised future

was reported in a newsletter, one of the

first to appear during those dawn years

of permaculture, the SE Queensland

Permaculture: A newsletter of the subtropics.

The newsletter’s reporting on one of those

early courses highlights what could have

become a different structure for permaculture:

“The agents trained in the course will be fully

franchised when they submit ten designs for

Tagari’s approval”3.

3 The Permaculture Papers 3—Childhood; www.pacific-edge.info

That would have created a very different

permaculture to the one we find today.

There is another unrealised course that

permaculture might have taken, a course

similar to that taken by another enviro-social

movement that I discuss below.

Proposal for a different future

The loose, diverse, ideologically varied,

distributed network structure that emerged from

the permaculture milieu has been a strength in

that it values grassroots initiative. But it has been

a weakness in positioning permaculture as an

advocate in society because of the lack of any

unified and representative voice. Permaculture

has been good at doing things locally, but not

at a larger scale and less so when it comes to

exerting influence on decision makers.

The idea of creating a representative body for

permaculture has been around for a couple

decades but until recently it has been resisted

as ‘centralist’ and its mention would garner

resistance. This I recall from discussions at

permaculture convergences4 during the 1990s

and on the first permaculture email discussion

group.

That attitude appears to have changed rather

suddenly as became clear at Australasian

Permaculture Convergence (APC10) at

Kuranda in Far North Queensland in 2010.

In what must have been the most fractious

convergence to date a proposal for a new,

national, representative organisation was

4 A convergence is a gathering or conference of permaculture practitioners. Australasian Permaculture Convergences are traditionally organised every two years in different places, although there have been longer gaps between them. There are also International Permaculture Convergences held less frequently.


floated and those at the convergence voted

for it to happen.

Unfortunately, as if to demonstrate that it falls

to the few to make things happen at scale in

permaculture, most of those who voted for

change have not been around to help make it

happen.

Community origin, different evolutions

Organisations and practices that start around

the same time within a similar social milieu

can follow different evolutionary paths. This is

due to how they are conceived and brought

into existence — to their starting conditions.

Starting conditions for any new organisation are

quite important to its future; they set an initial

direction that can be hard to change..

Permaculture’s evolution is markedly different to

that of another practice whose development

it paralleled. It may be instructive to briefly

look at this other practice now that some in

permaculture are seeking greater social and

organisational influence.

Bush regenerato rs

pos i t i oned themse lves

i n t he publ i c imaginat i on

as work ing i n the publ i c

i n te res t . . .

Unlike permaculture’s uncoordinated move

towards a decentralised national network

of groups, individuals and small commercial

entities, the practice of ecological restoration

(also known as bushland regeneration5) started,

5 The credit for starting bush regeneration is ascribed to Joan and Eileen Bradley who developed weed management and native vegetation restoration techniques in Sydney during the 1960s.

like permaculture, as a grassroots movement

but went on to rapidly develop pathways to

practice and legitimacy through TAFE courses.

These set minimum competency standards and

validated the practice, providing the basis for its

recognition as an industry.

This was boosted by the promotion of an

Australian-first plant nationalist message

by membership organisations such as the

Society for Growing Australian Plants, and this

further increased environmental restoration‘s

prominence among the public as well as with

state and local governments. Building links

with the then-emerging national Landcare

movement and organisations like Greening

Australia further legitimised environmental

restoration. Creating links with other networks

and organisations raised the profile and

credibility of bushland regeneration with local,

state and federal government.

Bush regenerators positioned themselves in the

public imagination as working in the public

interest, differentiating themselves from that part

of the environment movement6 that was based

on campaigning to save natural areas. Their

plant nationalist message found resonance with

Australian nationalism and with a personal sense

of place and this further embedded bushland

regeneration in popular culture.

This legitimation and normalisation of the

practice and the development of a grand

narrative7 around the idea of growing

Australian plants and of restoring degraded

6 Permaculture, too, distanced itself from campaigning environmentalism. Bill Mollison criticised the environment movement for simply campaigning against what it did not like rather than creating what it wanted to see.

7 A grand narrative or metanarrative is a statement in story form. It is a comprehensive explanation of a social movement or other entity in terms of its goals and including a critique of what it seeks to change.


urban, farm and bush land made it possible

to attract funding and to create salaried local

government positions. Small bush regeneration

businesses set up to contract their services

to councils and to offer employment to the

qualified.

Permaculture’s different path

This was the path not taken by permaculture.

While permaculture and ecological restoration

can be seen as emerging from the broad

environmental sensibility that started to

become apparent in the late 1960s and that

developed further in the 1970s, today we see

ecological restoration mainstreamed as both

a community-based practice and as a small

industry enjoying legitimacy with government.

In contrast, permaculture remains a grassroots

practice largely with no economic or political

influence and with only limited legitimacy

among landuse and design professionals.

A comparison of ecological restoration and

permaculture discloses the tight structure of

ecological restoration and a loose and quite

variable structure of permaculture. One set

a course for legitimacy with community and

government by establishing formal structures

while the other evolved a decentralised

body of practice anchored in the local and

informally bound by group agreement that the

ethics8 and principles9 of permaculture form

the basis of the design system. One succeeded

in setting up a structure of employment while

the other has done this only minimally, thus one

could be built into people’s livelihoods while the

other, for most of its practitioners, could not.

8 The three ethics of permaculture: 1. Care of the Earth. 2. Care of people. 3. Fairshare.

9 Sets of permaculture principles have been devised by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, and added to by permaculture practitioners.

With i t s fo rma l s t ruc tu re,

bush l and regenerat i on se t

s tanda rds fo r t he work

o f i t s p rac t i t i one rs. The

adopt i on o f s tanda rds has

ba re ly been ta l ked about

i n pe rmacu l tu re

It is this latter point that has contributed to

permaculture becoming largely an application

for use in the household, something that

was recognised by David Holmgren, one of

permaculture’s inventors. Permaculture as

a set of ideas for individual or home life, to

increase opportunities for sustainable living, has

been accompanied by sometimes successful

attempts to apply it at the community level

that date back to its first decade. Perhaps

the first significant indication of this was the

book Sustainable Urban Renewal: Urban

permaculture in Bowden, Brompton and

Ridleton, a publication of innovative South

Australian permaculture practitioners10.

With its formal structure, bushland regeneration

set standards for the work of its practitioners.

The adoption of standards has barely been

talked about in permaculture and too much of

its work has been poorly executed, especially

in public places where it is most visible. This

is a perception I have come across in my

work. There is no guarantee to anyone hiring

someone to do permaculture work that

they will meet a set of minimum standards

of functionality and completion. Instances

where permaculture people have created the

impression that they do professional quality

work and have been consulted have revealed

10 1985; Social Impacts Publications, Armidale NSW.


their lack of knowledge and capacity in some

cases. This has not helped the reputation of the

design system.

Establishing a set of standards11 for

permaculture work will be necessary for

graduates of the Accredited Permaculture

Training, as they are for any profession. Doing

the same for permaculture practice in public

places in general is more problematic, in part

due to the lack of consideration of standards

by many teaching permaculture design

courses, especially those using the third person

11 Standards for work in public places would have to account for the use of Australian Standards and the use on sites of Worksafe practices, a legal requirement. To my knowledge, neither of these get much coverage in permaculture design courses . They would have a place in Accredited Permaculture Training.

Despite this, permaculture projects are carried out in public places without considerations of liability apart from some organisations carrying public liability insurance. There appears to be little knowledge that permaculture practitioners are legally liable for the consequences of their work, or that in NSW volunteers are recognised as workers in Worksafe legislation.

Permaculture designers, I suspect many fail to realise, remain liable for the effects and impacts of their works.

teaching approach of people new to the

design system doing a design course then

going out to offer their own without gaining

complementary experience. Often, it is only

what those teachers have learned from their

own teachers that is passed on.

I recognise that ecological restoration

and permaculture emerged from ideas

around ecological sustainability and can be

complementary. I also know that the two have

clashed at times and there continues to be

occasional friction. This, I suspect, has a lot to

do with permaculture’s more anthropocentric

focus on sustainability as well as its broader

focus that incorporates the continuity of natural

systems and the environmental services they

provide us.


PROPERTY BUSH REGENERATION PERMACULTURE

INTELLIGENCE/

STARTING

CONDITIONS

A clear philosophical attitude based

on plant nationalism and the value of

indigenous ecologies.

A somewhat variable philosophy around

sustainability.

CLEAR INTENT To popularise and legitimise ecological

restoration via formal training, standards

of practice, formal structure, grant funded

projects, employment opportunity and

support from government.

A generally clear intent, though lacking in

detail and variable in implementation, of

providing a design approach to sustainable

living mainly through community-based

initiative.

APPROPRIATE

MEANS

TAFE training, supervised community

activity, standards for professional and

volunteer work, links with and funding

through government, salaried local

government positions.

A structure for community action/

participation often mediated by local

government.

A sense of belonging passed on through

formal training.

Mainly a community-based approach

informed by the Permaculture Design

Course and articulated in books and online

permaculture media.

No formal standards of practice; a sense

of belonging passed on via a range of

permaculture design courses of variable

content and quality. A recent move towards

formal qualifications and educational

standards via Accredited Permaculture

Training.

CLEAR PLAN OF

ACTION

Legitimacy, validation and continuity via a

TAFE course, industry structure, advocacy,

recognition, maintenance of credibility.

Decentralised network structure has

evolved no clear plan of action at the state,

regional or national scale though some

exist at the local level.

Comparing the evolution: bush regeneration & permaculture


2. The structure of permaculture: a mesh of networks

Fuzz iness a round de f i n i ng

pe rmacu l tu re des ign i s a

s t reng th when i t a l l ows a

b road range o f t h i ngs to

fa l l i n to the pe rmacu l tu re

baske t and take roo t

the re. . .

IF WE LOOK at the national permaculture milieu

in systems thinking terms, we see a matrix of

entities — groups, individuals, households,

small businesses some with their own online

communities, educators, consultancies,

online virtual entities — a national network

within a boundary defined by a rather loose,

informal and sometimes poorly articulated

notion of what are and are not the foci of the

permaculture design system.

This looseness — this fuzziness — of what is and

is not permaculture can be a strength when it

allows a broad range of things to fall into the

permaculture basket and take root there.

It is a weakness when practitioners are asked to

describe the design system. Their explanations

can be quite varied and often reflect two main

influences: their own involvement in the design

system and the passed-on understanding of

what their permaculture teachers said it is.

An artifact of education

This passed-on understanding often comes

from the third-person teaching I mentioned

earlier. It occurs when people do a design

course then soon after go on to offer their own

course without testing and expanding what

they learned through adequate personal

experience. Doing this should be a process

spanning years, not months.

Third person teaching might be good for the

teacher but it usually contributes little by way

of new insights and material and becomes

the passing-on of knowledge rather than the

development of new knowledge. The design

system thus does not grow a great deal with

third-person teaching. It in part accounts for the

wide variability in the quality of permaculture

design courses.

It is, however, an artifact of permaculture’s

early development... of its starting conditions.

It probably has much to do with Bill Mollison’s

early idea of an itinerant army of permaculture

educators doing their training then going out

across the country to educate others. That this

didn’t happen to any significant degree may

signify the value of place-based educators to

which students come. Looked at over the long

term, travelling to teach has proven viable for

a number of early-established educators and

to a few who started later, however even these

travelling teachers have a home base.

Quality has long been a talking point about

the permaculture design course. Student

responses to the courses they pay for span

enthusiasm to disappointment. Sometimes,

it’s the lack of knowledge, more a superficial

knowledge of components that might be used

in design that leads to criticism. Sometimes

it’s the teaching methods. Many students

today are tertiary educated in the ideas

contained in the permaculture design course

and expect teachers to be equally if not


more knowledgable. When they are not the

credibility of the course, and of permaculture, is

called into question.

Permaculture is — or should be — an open

system. That is, it is supposedly open to new

ideas coming in from outside, from beyond

its porous boundary. This allows a certain

adaptability and shift of focus, an updating

of what permaculture is and should do, and a

responsiveness to events and trends in the wider

world. This is a good argument for creating

loose links with compatible organisations that

can be the source of new ideas.

The des ign sys tem

does no t grow a great

dea l w i th th i rd -pe rson

teach ing. . . i t i n pa r t

accounts fo r t he w ide

va r i ab i l i t y i n t he qua l i t y

o f pe rmacu l tu re des ign

cou rses. . .

Permaculture as an array of networks

It might be a reasonable idea that any group

of permaculture practitioners planning any

ambitious, larger scale, perhaps national

organisation within permaculture might do well

to reflect the present structure of permaculture

in Australia.

As explained earlier, we can envision

permaculture in Australia as consisting of a

geographically distributed, loosely connected

and decentralised array of organisations,

communities of practice, small business/social

enterprise, households and individuals.

This is the result of an evolution that started over

35 years ago when the design system was first

articulated (in the book Permaculture One)

and reflects the starting conditions set by its

inventors, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren,

and those of its first early adopter cohort. These

conditions set the stage for the evolution of

the permaculture idea and of how it would be

implemented.

Influenced by cultures, economic conditions,

trends, political change and ideas outside its

boundary, permaculture adapted and evolved

into a practice of groups, households and

individuals acting autonomously where they live

but within the ambit of permaculture’s ethics.

Sooner rather than later, a loose,

uncoordinated national network of practitioners

emerged.

The networks of permaculture

Networks are structured as:

nodes — these are individuals or groupsmm

hubs — major nodes the location of activity mm

with many connections to other nodes and

forming a cluster

connections — these are flows through which mm

information or goods move from node to

node.

This structure can be thought of in terms of

stocks and flows. The nodes and hubs form

the stocks in permaculture made up of

accumulations of knowledge, ideas and tools.

The flows are the connections in the network

along which that knowledge moves from

node to node, hub to hub. Flows distribute the

permaculture body of knowledge.


. . . pe rmacu l tu re has

no head o f f i ce—the re

i s no l ocat i on o r

en t i t y that f i l l s t he

func t i on o f ove ra l l

coo rd inat i on , o rgan i sat i on

o r rep resentat i on

o f t he p rac t i ce o f

pe rmacu l tu re. . .

The present model of permaculture in Australia

is of a decentralised array of nodes and hubs

connected digitally for the most part — though

physically when people come together for

events and convergences — within a loose

national network that is conceptual rather than

organisational. At present, most of the national

permaculture conversation takes place on

social media, primarily Facebook, indicating

the critical importance of this medium for

keeping people in touch. The quantity of

information flowing today is far in excess of

that which passed through the Permaculture

Oceania email list only a few years ago.

Social media has opened the national (and

international, if you consider links to New

Zealand permaculture people) conversation to

a flood of ideas.

An array of entities

Let’s imagine the permaculture milieu in this

country as the array of organisations and other

entities that I described above. What would it

look like?

. . .where a re a l l t hose

supposed ly - thousands

who have done the

Pe rmacu l tu re Des ign

Course?

First, we notice this: permaculture has no

head office — there is no location or entity

that fills the function of overall coordination,

organisation or representation of the practice

of permaculture. That is, permaculture has not

formed a formal hierarchy with a centralised

leadership delegating tasks and decisions

to subsidiary units and individuals such as

government or corporations do. What we end

up with are implementations of permaculture

ideas as permaculture is understood by those

setting them up.

This creates a significant point of difference that

decentralises initiative but that precludes any

broad political influence.

Graduate numbers—no correlation to active participation in networks

There are a large number of individual

nodes in the permaculture milieu, people

with no formal connection to permaculture

associations or other structures but who are

nonetheless connected online and who identify

as permaculture practitioners. Their degree of

connectedness varies and thinking about it

brings to mind the question that is sometimes

voiced: where are all those supposedly-

thousands who have done the Permaculture

Design Course?

I’ve heard this question numerous times and it

arises when permaculture educators disclose

the approximate numbers who have gone


through their courses, and it arises when

members of local permaculture groups find

participation in group activities lacking. It’s

an important question because post-course

participation may reflect course content,

teaching and relevancy to contemporary life.

Questions arise:

Is there something lacking in design courses mm

that would encourage greater community

participation in projects and events?

Is there too much focus on individual mm

and household initiatives and too few on

community enterprise?

do course providers put too little effort mm

into developing a sense of belonging in

permaculture and generating an espirit-de-

corps?

do course providers have too little mm

experience in community development?

The assumption seems to be that people

graduating from design courses go on to

practice what they learn at home or in their

own lives if not in the community, assuming

that they start to practice permaculture at all.

But while this happens to some degree — that

is revealed through participant or teacher

observation — there is no objective evaluation

data to validate the assumption. This —

objective data — is something missing in the

practice of permaculture because there has

been little emphasis on evaluating the work of

the design system. That sets it apart from NGOs,

say, working in international development

where even small organisations evaluate their

work as a condition of receiving grants. The

availability of time to evaluate would likely be

a limiting factor when it comes to voluntary

community-based permaculture associations

as would the cost of hiring an outside evaluator.

C i t i ng l a rge numbers o f

cou rse graduates as a

s i gn o f success m isses

the i ns i gh t t hat comes

th rough an unders tand ing

o f how educat i on works. . .

Highlighting the number of graduates coming

through design courses mistakes quantity for

quality, for the design system is not advanced

by the numbers passing through courses but

by the influence they have — what is called

the ‘ripple effect’. It would be better to have a

small number of active graduates who go on

to practice permaculture in a public way and

so exemplify it rather than a large number of

more or less inactive graduates or those whose

practice remains in the relative invisibility of the

household. This would influence their degree

of participation in the permaculture network

and their contribution to it — whether they form

active or inactive nodes or are missing from the

network altogether.

Citing large numbers of course graduates as

a sign of success misses the insight that comes

through an understanding of how education

works. There is much to learn from thinkers like

James Prochaska and his ideas on individual

readiness to act on a new behaviour, and

the similar, more recent work of sustainability

educator, Bob Doppelt.

Hierarchies in permaculture’s network

Nodes form a type of hierarchy based upon

the role adopted and the starting conditions

affecting the development of the node.


Hubs are major influential nodes in the

network which have a larger number of close

connections to constituent nodes such that

they form a discernible cluster. These might

be made up of organisational members,

past students of permaculture educators or

communities of practice or interest. They are

in turn connected to other hubs and nodes

through channels of information flow.

Examples of hubs include:

regional permaculture associations — mm

Permaculture Melbourne, Permaculture

Sydney North, Permaculture Association

South Australia

Hub

Hub

Hub

Hub

Hub

Permaculture exists as a decentralised network of associations, individuals

and projects linked by flows of information.

External networks linked by individuals assuming the role of

connectors

HubHubs are major sites in which nodes are closely-connected, such as memberships or communities of practice (eg: Permaculture Australia, ReGenAg, Permaculture Melbourne)

Nodes—may be groups, individuals or businesses/social enterprises closely connected in regional hubs and actively participating in regional or in the the greater networkLoosely-connected nodes with a low degree of connectedness to regional/national nodes

Other networks loosely connected to hubs and sometimes through intermediate links (e.g: community gardens network, climate change network, Sydney City Farm)

Flows of information

Conceptual network model of permaculture in Australia

the Permaculture Research institutemm

Northey Street City Farmmm

Randwick Sustainability Hub.mm

Nodes consist of individuals connected in

a network and form its basic component

structure. Nodes can also be smaller, less

populated groups that have fewer connections

than better-populated hubs but that may be

connected to larger regional hubs.

Nodes include:

commercial entities such as social enterprise/mm

small business, permaculture educators


special interest groups with fewer mm

participants than the larger groups making

up the dominant hubs, such as ReGenAg,

Transition groups (these can also be seen

as minor hubs because they have more

connections than individuals)

individuals who are thought leaders in mm

permaculture, such as Holmgren Design

Services.

Channels of open, two-way communication

link hubs, nodes and individuals and join them

to other networks through what are known as

‘weak links’, the opposite of the ‘strong links’ of

closely-connected hubs.

The idea that weak links are important came

from a 1973 paper published by US researcher,

Mark Granovetter. He researched how people

found managerial positions and discovered

that it was not through friends, as might have

been anticipated, but through acquaintances

who were only indirectly connected to them.

Granovetter found that social networks (not

only those online) consist largely of friends or

members of groups and that they are closely-

connected. That is, your friends and association

members are likely to know each other and

form a close circle with strong links between

members. They are likely to be familiar with

how each other think and are likely to share a

similarity of outlook, to be exposed to much the

same information and thus form a more generic

group. In effect, they form a closely-coupled

cluster.

Closely connected and insulated

A property of this type of closely-connected

network is that, sometimes, it exhibits resistance

to new knowledge or information coming in

from outside, especially if it challenges existing

beliefs, practices and attitudes.

This I witnessed as a reaction to the posting

on a social network page of a Transition Town

group of an article, written by a scientist

unconnected to the group, that supported the

development of nuclear energy as a means

of moving from oil based fuels in a context of

climate change. One response to the posting

was quite hostile and the respondent ended

up questioning why anyone would read such

articles, and saying that they had no place on

the group’s social media.

. . . c l o se ly - connec ted

groups can res i s t new

ideas. . .

Yet, it was a topic that those involved in

proposing changes to society’s sources of

energy should be familiar with even though it

might not be their preferred technology. The

attempt to shut it out of the group’s discussion

indicated a closely-coupled organisation

closed to challenging ideas.

The respondent was not alone in reacting

that way. Another respondent from a similar

organisation said that people holding such

views as the writer of that pro-nuclear article

really weren’t sustainability-oriented. This was

a case of black versus white — a statement of

instant polarisation by the group saying it was

right and that those with differing ideas were

wrong. The author of the article considered

himself as someone acting in the interests of

sustainability.

Both instances demonstrated how closely-

connected groups can resist new ideas,

especially when they are uneasy with their

content. This case demonstrates organisations

closed to challenging information and which

seek to insulate themselves from it. A more


enlightened response would have been to

engage with the author of the article to explore

and properly assess his ideas before deciding to

oppose them or otherwise.

The importance of connectors

Groups form closely-coupled clusters but they

are not shut off from the world.

They are linked through individuals who form

weak, looser ties with other hubs and nodes in

the larger network. These are the ‘connectors’

identified by Malcolm Gladwell in his influential

book, The Tipping Point1, in which he described

their importance to the transmission of ideas. It

is through the connectors that new information

flows between clusters or hubs in networks.

Connectors may be the familiar names that

pop up frequently in social media or the

Worldwide Web. They are easily mistaken by

those unfamiliar with how networks structure

and work as ‘dominating’ presences.

Connectors may also be thought leaders

who post ideas-rich messages or who repost

such content. They may be curators of topics,

reposting information to their own networks.

They seek to cultivate the intellectual garden as

well as the soil-based garden of 3D-space. This

1 Gladwell M, 2000; The Tipping Point; Little Brown, USA. ISBN 0316346624, ISBN 0-316-31696-2

is an area partially evacuated in permaculture

according to some. There’s plenty of focus

on going out and doing things but too little

on reflecting on them and on big picture,

on philosophical or intellectual content of

the design system. This has been said by a

significant number of people over a significant

period of time.

We can view the permaculture milieu as a

fragmented web of closely-connected clusters

or hubs communicating through the weak

links of communicators. This is how new ideas

and information flows between nodes and is

key to hubs and nodes changing what they

think and do and how they do it. Connectors

are important to organisational evolution, to

adaptability to changing conditions and to

fitness for chosen purpose.

But connectors are not alone. Gladwell says

that two other types also create links with

individuals and groups or nodes:

mavens mm are people with specialist

knowledge who share that knowledge to

help others

salesmenmm are people who publicly convince

others of the value of an idea.

You can see that individuals might fill more than

one of these roles in different circumstances,

however it is the connector who is critical to the

two-way flow of information in networks.

Mavens share knowledge to assist others

Salesmen convince othersConnectors facilitate links with other nodes and hubs

Malcolm Gladwell's typology of roles in a network


Participation = viability

Now, here’s an important thing to remember

about networks:

t he va lue o f a ne twork

i s p ropo r t i ona l to the

number o f ac t ive nodes

w i th in i t .

The greater the number of active nodes, the

more exchange and the more comprehensive

the conversation. Note that these are ‘active’

nodes. Networks often have inactive nodes

consisting of people who read and listen but

do not contribute. They add little of value to a

network and, in online networks, are known as

‘lurkers’. Sometimes, people new to networks

lurk awhile to gain an understanding of how a

network operates before becoming active.

Once again, it comes down not to numbers

alone, such as the number of Facebook Friends

or Likes an organisation or individual might

have, but to the activity of those numbers —

the active nodes and what they contribute to

online conversations — and to the wider effect

they have. Once again, it’s less about quantity

and more about quality — the number of

active nodes that contribute to conversations.

Any organisation with larger territorial ambitions

in permaculture would do well to foster a

national conversation because new ideas

are built upon old ideas and the wider the

conversation the more we have to draw upon

in creating those new, innovative ideas that

would take us far.

How to relate?

Had permaculture developed along the

franchise model mentioned earlier, we would

have had a very different structure today,

possibly more akin to a pyramidal hierarchy

than a network.

The nearest permaculture has experienced

to a hierarchy was the natural domination of

the early hub, the Permaculture Institute. Its

time was the formative decades of the design

system. The Institute, first based in Tasmania

then moving to northern NSW before returning

to Tasmania, attained its leadership role as the

pioneering organisation in the development of

the design system. It set the starting conditions

for permaculture — the Institute published its

first permaculture educators’ curriculum in the

early 1980s and superseded this by adopting Bill

Mollison’s Permaculture—A Designers’ Manual2

after its publication in 1988. It published the

first formative books on permaculture and

was dominated by the presence and natural

leadership of Bill Mollison as unofficial leader

and spokesman of the movement.

. . . i t wou ld have to adopt

the pe rmacu l tu re adage

o f s ta r t i ng where you

a re and work ing w i th

what you have and accep t

the ne tworked s t ruc tu re

as the i n i t i a l s ta r t i ng

cond i t i on . . .

2 Mollison B, 1988; Permaculture — A Designer’s Manual; Tagari Publishers, Australia, ISBN-10: 0908228015 ISBN-13: 978-0908228010. http://www.tagari.com


The Institute lost its prominence with its return

to Tasmania and by declining to participate

first in permaculture email discussion groups

then in the online social networks around

permaculture — the location of the national

permaculture conversation today. This has

made the Institute less visible and influential.

Contributing to its declining prominence were

permaculture educators moving away from

the Institute’s curriculum on the grounds that it

was not adaptive enough for different teaching

circumstances and demographics. One size,

they said, fits few.

How would an ambitious organisation seeking

to establish a national structure relate to the

decentralised network of permaculture in

Australia? I think it would have to adopt the

permaculture adage of starting where you

are and working with what you have and

accept the networked structure as the initial

starting condition, seeking ways to engage

constructively with it and adopting an internal

structure that allowed this to happen.

That’s what our next section looks at.


3. Looking for a model

. . . t he h i e ra rch i ca l mode l . . .

i s now sub jec t to the l aw

o f d im in i sh ing re tu rns. . .

PERMACULTURE IS A DESIGN SYSTEM that

purports to offer viable and effective

alternatives to business as usual.

As was suggested by Bill Mollison, co-creator

with David Holmgren of the permaculture

design system, permaculture groups start

with what they have to work with and

follows the principle of maximum yield for

minimum investment. What this means is that

permaculture groups have adopted existing

legal structures suited to their purpose, such

as the incorporated association model and, in

Permaculture Australia’s case, the company

limited by guarantee that gives it a national

reach.

I den t i t y i s se l f -

concept and , p ro j ec ted ,

publ i c image. I t i s no t

‘ b rand ing ’ . . .

Doing that can be seen as common sense, but

we need look to the present for clues about

alternative structures for larger permaculture

organisations with ambitions beyond the local

area.

What type of organisation?

Any organisation needs identity. What is it?

Why does it exist? How will it structure itself and

how will it work? Identity is self-concept and,

projected, public image. It is not ‘branding’, an

essentially superficial public relations exercise

more to do with form rather than substance

and the property of businesses rather than

community organisations or NGOs.

Identity has much to do with an organisation’s

sense of direction and before setting up an

organisation of any scale beyond that of the

local group (though why not that too?) there

are important questions for those creating the

entity. Will the organisation be:

a mm campaigning organisation indulging

in political actions around some topic?;

classically, this has taken the form

of opposing the initiative of others

characterised by statements and slogans

around ‘stop the ...’, ‘save the .....’ etc; it

is an essentially reactive mode expressing

a position against something that others

want to do and has become known as

‘negative campaigning’; it was the model

that big environmentalism1 built themselves

on and that then had utility but now is

often perceived as tired and increasingly

unattractive; there is potential, however, to

campaign for something new and positive

through what we might call ‘positive

campaigning — this links to...

1 The large environmental organisations that emerged in Australia during the 1980s and 1990s and which became politically influenctial at the federal and state level. Most campaigned, often successfully, on saving examples of natural environment and although some sought to move on to more contemporary environmental themes this proved only moderately successful. Examples of big environmental organisations include th Australian Conservation Foundation, Wilderness Society, Total Environment Centre NSW.


a mm creative organisation developing positive

alternatives; it is this that permaculture

people have adopted as their self-concept,

especially after Bill Mollison offered his

critique of negative campaigning and

positioned permaculture as an alternative-

builder; in 2012 the Australian Food

Sovereignty Alliance took a similar approach

in response to the federal government’s

move to develop an agribusiness, neo-liberal

food policy; the Alliance engaged the public

regionally in creating the People’s Food

Plan2 as an alternative rather than running

a negative campaign around ‘stop the

government’s food plan’; this creative and

attractive model positioned the Alliance as a

proactive, imaginative agency.

Creating positive alternatives involves making

a creative critique — without exaggering

and using selectively harvested information

(people are too smart to be taken in by this

today) — of something and the positioning

of a fair and achievable, well-thought-out

alternative as the better way. It does not use

the opponent’s language, mental models or

frame of reference and reframes the issue in

terms of authentic public interest. It positions

the creative alternative as one offering

opportunity, long-term public/economic/

security/national/cultural interest. It seeks to

position it as ‘normal’, framing that which

it is offering an alternative to as aberrant,

potentially dysfunctional or of benefit to a small,

select group.

2 People’s Food Plan working paper 2013: http://www.australianfoodsovereigntyalliance.org/peoples-food-plan/revised-plan/

What structure?

That’s the organisational mode. Within that

there exists a range of options for the way an

organisation might structure itself.

Will it focus on being:

a mm conventional advocacy or lobby group

with a structure similar to others of the

type with an organisational hierarchy and

a minimal, perhaps select membership

rather than an open membership attracting

larger numbers; the risk is being perceived

as closed, aloof and elitist and structured

similarly to those you seek to influence or

who oppose you; there may be other, less

formal structures for advocacy groups

although their nature of their work calls for

formal structure with defined roles such as

spokerperson.

a mm social movement with characteristics such

as...

passionm-

a participant/membership basem-

inspirational leadershipm-

a barrier to entry such as a declaration of m-

agreement with the movement’s agenda

empowering people with knowledge and m-

stimulating action

shared ownership that allows the team to m-

take the movement forward

a powerful identity that forms the m-

organisation’s point of difference to other

entities, rather than a brand as is common

among commercial entities

both an online and offline presencem-

making participant advocates feel m-

important

trustful and trusting of others m-

achieving results m-

fighting an injustice or creating an m-

alternative, or both.


a mutual support organisation in which m-

the focus is on the individual and their

wellbeing/advancement.

a service organisation, such as a m-

representative industry body working on

behalf of a specific milieu.

a maker organisation whose activity is to m-

create the models it advocates so as to set

up, prototype and distribute functioning

structures as real alternatives to business-

as-usual, rather than/as well as advocating

politically.

a mm distributed network...

in which the nodes are the activity hubs m-

that form as permanent or temporary

structures to do some particular task

a federal organisational structure in which m-

nodes/hubs self-initiate and self-manage

within the bounds of the organisation’s

mission

a management team to look after legals, m-

membership records, relationships etc.

The distributed network has no head office.

The functions are carried out by the hubs

that are connected by two-way paths

of communication. This is an inherently

democratic, self-managing structure.

a mm platform with a core of organisational and

legal structure and with hubs and nodes that

develop applications of the organisation’s

mission according to regional needs; for

example, there might be an advocacy hub,

an educational hub, an administrative hub,

a hub in which participants do work of an

appied type by creating something physical.

Think of how smartphone manufactures

create a platform of technoogy and

software then leave it to developers to

create apps that add value to the basic

platform.

a mm community of practice that engages

participants in making and learning,

combining practical activity with workshops

or study circles for self-education.

The platform and distributed network models

could be combined.

There exists today, mainly in the business world

and among the bodies that study organisations

as well as within digital culture, a realisation that

the hierarchical model — an artifact of the age

of industrialism of the late Nineteenth and early

Twentieth centuries — is now subject to the law

of diminishing returns.

The reduced effectiveness of established,

heirarchical structures is being driven by

the incapacity of many to respond with

sufficient rapidity to changes in their market or

constituency (terms that include organisational

memberships and their expectations) and in

their environment or to the initiatives of other

groups. They are slow to comprehend and

adapt to the churn (the rate of change) we

find in markets and constituencies.

Options for organisations

creative or campaigning?

• advocacy• distributed network• platform • community of practice


The importance of culture

In his book Understanding Voluntary

Organisations-How To make Them Function

Effectively3, the organisational educator

and author, Charles Handy, describes four

organisational structures:

1. The ClubThis revolves around the character of a leader

and is most appropriate for closely-coupled

organisations in which the leadership team

shares the values of the leader. This is a culture

built around a shared mindset that emerges

under the dominant presence of a leader.

Communication is mainly by talking and the

organisation can respond quickly to changes in

the environment.

2. The person cultureThis is a minimal organisational structure that

gathers around an individual who forms the

most important component. Think of a well

known singer and the team that manages their

affairs.

In its early years the Permaculture Institute

could be seen as a person culture due to the

dominance of Bill Mollison. It moved towards

the distributed network model as it evolved.

3. Role cultureThis is the familiar structure of our bureaucracies

in government and corporations. It deals with

tasks that are repetitive and unchanging

and is governed by the logical mindset

of rules, procedures, standards, chains of

communication and decision making, formal

relationships and systems.

It is a culture resistant to change and that

cannot handle change in its environment

3 Handy C, 1988, Understanding Voluntary Organisations-How To make Them Function Effectively; Penguin Books UK.

with speed or effectiveness. When it has some

higher degree of effectiveness and a policy of

doing so, it can be a fair structure in the way

it treats its clients equally. It is a slow-moving

culture.

Within this culture, individuals occupy roles and

are replaceable within those roles, the roles

having the continuity. It discounts initiative,

entrepreneurship and independent action in

part because there may be no procedure for

dealing with the individuality and uncertainty

of those things. It finds it very difficult to deal

with exceptions to the rule, expedient and

advantageous they might be.

Imagine the conventional hierarchical

organisation chart and you have a mental

picture of the role culture organisation.

4. Task cultureThis organisational structure is one of

small teams sharing knowledge, skills and

responsibilities to accomplish something

specific. It has minimum hierarchy and no

managers, the backup work being performed

by coordinators who are team members rather

than people having some controlling role and

which form a specialsed team without any

status different to other teams. The model

has reviews of progress rather than of past

performance. In decision making it consults the

team rather than a formal or informal leader

who makes decisions alone. The team culture is

not bogged down waiting for decisions to flow

through a role culture hierarchy.

Speed of response to changes in its

environment is a characteristic, as is an

informality of operation and changeability

within its structure. It may be a temporary

assembly. It can be virtual. It values innovation

and entrepreneurship. With loose, adaptable

plans allowing manouverability in place of


procedures, it thrives in organisations focused

on problem solving and has a culture of

questioning.

A operational methodology for the team

culture may be the Agile Planning approach.

This is a project planning methodology based

on the work of teams which proceed in ‘sprints’

of manageable work chunks completed within

specific times to complete a project. Rather

than produce a detailed plan then attempt to

complete an entire project all at once, Agile

Planning produces a series of iterations of the

product, each adding something functional

that improves it until the work is completed and

operational.

Agile Planning enacts the philosophy of

continual improvement. Its advantages

are an ability to adapt its work to changing

circumstances as it proceeds, to make

changes and to produce a product that

reflects conditions in its environment at the

time of completion rather than what prevailed

at the time of starting which, given the pace

of change, may be obsolete by the time it is

eventually completed.

The hybrid culture

For some organisations, a blend of the

‘role culture’ for carrying out necessary

administrative functions such as financial

management, secretariat etc can be matched

with the ‘task culture’, the task teams doing the

actual work the organisation sets up to do. This

may suit organisations that have some legal

requirements around their structure, such as a

company limited by guarantee, the structure

adopted by some organisations that operate

nationally.

The role culture component of a hybridised

organisation would form a core functions team

carrying out the legally necessary responsibilities

— an ‘admin team’ in effect — such as

financial management, membership records,

legals, reporting etc. This would see individuals

occupying fixed roles. They may or may not

be members of a board of management but

would report directly to it. I’m not sure it makes

any difference if they are board members

unless there is some legal stipulation about that.

A board usually has people reporting to it on

the state of the organisation but who might

not be board members. It is concerned

with strategic direction, finding solutions to

problems that could affect the wellbeing of the

organisation, compliance with ethics, the law,

external relationships etc. The best boards do

not micromanage their organisations.

The task culture component of a hydridised

organisation would be based on work carried

out by small groups applying their talents

to specific tasks. They can come and go,

reform for new tasks and can be changed in

composition as circumstances suggest would

be advantageous. They may also be virtual,

geographically scattered and meet via digital

media.

Handy writes of the importance of creating

the right organisational culture. Many of us will

have seen how a wrong choice can quickly

alienate those with an innovative, creative

mindset such as a small organisation adopting

the controlling, hierarchical role culture

model rather than something looser and more

informal. Members will walk — they will simply

disappear and find another organisation more

conducive to the way they prefer to work.

I believe that within the permaculture milieu

there’s a predilection, a bias, towards the

less structured, informal task culture of teams

cooperating to produce somehting of value.


Learnings

Over recent decades we’ve learned a number

of things about organisations and how they

behave, be they business or in the voluntary

community sector.

The virtue of simplicityOne of these is that, for those in the voluntary

community sector, simplicity of structure, of

operation and of decision making is a key to

effectiveness and to organisational continuity,

mainly because voluntary work is squeezed

between working life and other life demands.

Volunteer capacity is defined by a mix of total

time availability, availability at particular times

such as those proposed for meetings or event

organisation, the possession of skill sets and

the expected and unexpected demands of

work and family. Ask too much of volunteers

and you get volunteer burnout and their loss to

the organisation. Ask too much of a voluntary

organisation and you get strategic overshoot —

expectations and planning of actions that are

beyond the capacities4 of the organisation as a

whole and of those within its teams.

A factor that improves retention of active

members is the opportunity for their

participation in decision making. It’s clear

— and we see this in permaculture — that

a portion of members are happy to remain

followers of decisions made by an elected or

de-facto leadership. This is fine and is unlikely

to affect those who prefer a more involved

role providing there is opportunity within the

organisation for them to exercise their desire for

more democratic involvement.

You sometimes hear low-key criticism of the

lack of opportunity in shared decision making

4 Capacities of time, knowledge, motivation, funding.

by people who would prefer the direct

democracy of a participatory approach to

leadership. Their argument is that voluntary

associations are community initiatives and

should thus reflect an appropriate democratic

model of organisation. Out of this has come

models of decision making such as sociocracy

which, according to Wikipedia, is “consent-

based decision making among equivalent

individuals and an organizational structure

based on cybernetic5 principles (http://

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocracy)”.

This raises the question of what leadership in

permaculture should look like. Should it be

more than another iteration of established,

mainstream models or should it aspire to

something new and innovative?

Organisational churnAnother learning is that organisations that rely

on an active membership for their work can

have a limited lifetime. They characteristically

start with great flourish, devolve to

maintenance by a committed team, a period

which characterises the majority of their

existence, then decline. This is the evolution

described by Roger’s innovation diffusion

curve6.

Over the past decade or so I believe we’ve

seen greater churn in the appearance and

disappearance of organisations, including

local permaculture associations. This may partly

be attributed to online media highlighting

a larger number of issues that stimulate

action by community-based organisations

and which fracture what could have been

unitary groupings, such as that of a national

5 The theory developed by Norbert Wiener of control and communication within a system. Related to the study of systems dynamics.

6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations


permaculture milieu, into action groups defined

by single issues or a small range of issues. For

example, many people who might have been

attracted to permaculture may have taken

their activism to the numerous climate change

groups into which they put the majority of their

effort, or in some cases they may have been

attracted to the apparent broader ambit of

the Transition Town movement. They might still

identify as permaculture practitioners but they

put most of their effort into the other group

rather than into a permaculture association.

Permacu l tu re has

no t evo l ved as a

campa ign ing movement .

I t i s a soc i a l movement

that deve lops a l te rnat ive

mode l s. . .

A longer term example of this churn is the

eclipsing of big environmentalism. Groups

like the Australian Conservation Foundation,

Total Environment Centre and the Wilderness

Society have declined in their presence and

impact since their peak during the 1990s. They

continue to exist but their presence is surely less

today than what it was and smaller, more agile

groups with a stronger online presence now

attract potential supporters. In many cases, big

environmentalism took on the structure of the

role culture organisation and, as some critics

have said, became ‘professionalised’. At worse,

this managerial structure relegate members to

the simple roles of petition signers or funding

sources, the core work or the organisations

being done by paid, specialised staff inhabiting

fixed positions.

I found an early sign that they were well

aware of this change when I was invited to

attend a focus group to look at how people

influential in the community NGO sector

perceived those big organisations and their

future. The notion that newer, internet-based

organisations had a lot to do with the decline

of big environmentalism came from that focus

group. Add to this the changing themes around

sustainability, such as climate change, resource

depletion and food sovereignty and you see

that big environmentalism has not been agile

enough to move on to new concerns in time.

Some have addressed these topics to some

degree but the running has often gone to new

entities that are not structured as role cultures.

How this presents opportunity for permaculture

and for any larger scale entity emerging

from the design system remains unexplored.

Permaculture, while this was happening,

remained largely locked into its own

demimonde of home gardening and the like

and therefore didn’t grasp the moment to

wield greater influence.

Influencing this was the critique of campaign-

based environmental organisation made by

Bill Mollison some years ago. This appears to

have become more nuanced recently, a

move away from the polarising attitude of

‘permaculture good, campaigning bad’.

Permaculture has not evolved as a

campaigning movement. It is a social

movement that develops alternative models

and in doing this it reaches back into that social

milieu that it emerged from — the ‘alternative’


movement of the 1970s7. A question for any

new, representative and larger scale body in

permaculture would be how alternative ideas

for sustainable living would be reinterpreted for

contemporary times.

The inspiration of flatness

It is partly from the community sector but also

from the newer industrial sectors that new

models and new ideas on how to structure

organisations are emerging, as well as from

scientific studies into the dynamics of systems

and networks.

I saw how the s l ow

mov ing cu l tu re o f

management made

dec i s i ons w i thou t the

i npu t o f s ta f f w i th

spec i a l i sed knowledge

ac t i ng as adv i se rs. . .

These new models are of ‘flat’ organisational

structures in which levels of management are

minimised and channels of communications

prised open and made two-way. There

7 ‘Alternative’ is a collective name given to the diversity of ideas and groups that constituted a social movement, starting in the late 1960s and continuing as an identifiable movement to the end of the 1970s, that actively sought new ways of living and satisfying life needs. The movement, part of the social and intellectual ferment of that decade, questioned basic assumptions about societies and was influential in the emergence of permaculture. The alternative movement can be seen to have characeristics different to the ‘hippy’ movement of the late 1960s to 1970s although there was overlap. One of these differences was the alternative movement’s focus on developing constructive solutions.

are others, such as federal structures with

managerial-independent, regional operations

linked into a national organisational structure,

or of structures consisting of a geographically

distributed network of specialists — units or

individuals — linked by rapid and open flows of

communications and called into cohesion as

virtual project teams when necessary.

I operate within the latter structure for an

agency working mainly in the Oceania region

but I have worked for entities conventionally

structured as the old hierarchies. In these,

mainly in local government, I saw how the

slow moving culture of management made

decisions without the input of staff with

specialised knowledge acting as advisers.

The decisions they made were, shall we say,

less than optimal. This is managerialism and it

comes with built in defects.

At issue is not the responsibility of management

to make decisions but of heeding the advice

of those with knowledge and experience

and allowing them to influence decisions. This

has relevance to larger scale permaculture

organisations. Just as in commercial

organisations, delay in decision making in

voluntary organisations can lead to lost

opportunity. The moment can pass all too

quickly.

Networks and the accompanying

understanding of how systems work and

of the application of that through systems

thinking8 are the organisational currency

of the emerging century. Hierarchies and

cumbersome management are tired. The new

models are inspired and await their birth and

deployment.

8 A decisional or problem solving approach that views events and phonomena as interacting parts of a whole system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_thinking


Permaculture practitioners might effectively

spend time in investigating these emerging

structures and working out which are relevant

to their mission, which are most compatible with

the characteristics of permaculture and which

are most useful in implementing the design

system’s three ethics.

Openness and radical transparency

There is confidentiality and there is compulsive

secrecy.

Confidentiality is the justifiable non-disclosure

of information regarding activities and

relationships the making public of which

could negatively affect an organisation or an

individual or disclose personal information.

There are two considerations when it comes

to the question of disclosure: Is there a legal

obligation to disclaose, such as evidence of

criminal behviour? Is there public interest that

would justify disclosure?

. . . cen t ra l con t ro l l o ses

and openness w ins i n a

ne tworked e ra . . .

Secrecy is the unnecessary withholding or

the deliberate concealing of information

about an organisation and its activities and

relationships. It is a compulsion of government

and corporations that is a misfit in voluntary

community organisations as well as others

working in the broader community sector.

Rad i ca l t ranspa rency

opens up o rgan i sat i ona l

p rocesses and

i n fo rmat ion . . .

Models of secrecy such as classifying

information as ‘commercia — in confidence’

remain valid where disclosure really could

put a business at an economic disadvantage

in a competitive market, however its misuse

by government and some corporations

has devalued it. Today, it is often seen as a

smokescreen.

‘Radical transparency’ is an idea proposed

as far back as 1994 by Kevin Kelly9 who wrote

that central control loses and openness wins in

a networked era. Articles in support of radical

transparency have appeared in Foreign Affairs

and Wired magazine in which Chris Anderson10

proposed that the product development

process by opened to customer input.

Radical transparency opens up organisational

processes and information. The adoption of

radical transparency can include structures

for the input of information and proposals by

the public or an organisation’s membership.

This could assist in planning and governance,

activities and organisational direction as well as

product development. Radical transparency

opens the door to what has been called ‘the

wisdom of the crowd’11.

Compulsive and unnecessary secrecy indicates

an organisation’s lack of respect for and trust in

its membership. It has no place in permaculture.

Radical transparency is its antidote.

9 Kelly, Kevin, 1994; Out of control: the rise of neo-biological civilization.

10 Past editor-in-chief, Wired magazine.

11 Accessing the collective input of a group of individuals rather than a single expert. ‘Crowdsourcing’ input.


Intellectual property — a persistent dilemma

Intellectual property has presented

permaculture with a dilemma and it is

something any national scale permaculture

organisation might consider.

In the past, some permaculture practitioners

have denied the reuse of their information while

others have openly shared what they have

produced.

The Th i rd E th i c i s w ide ly

seen to imp ly open

sou rce. . .

The dilemma has been manifested in the

publication of student notes — those made

by students — during the permaculture design

course. Are these really the intellectual property

of the teacher who determines whether and

how they can be redistributed by a student or

have they been given as part of the business

arrangement (such as fee for service, the

service being permaculture education) in

enrolling in a course and passed on to the

student? That seems to have been the belief

among many students and some have gone

on to publish the notes they have taken during

design courses.

It is not the ideas in a teacher’s course notes

that is the issue, for copyright law does not

cover ideas, only particular expressions of them.

Thus, permaculture educators and practitioners

are free to use the ideas expressed in Bill

Mollison’s Permaculture — A Designers’ Manual,

however Bill Mollison, or Tagari Publications,

controls the expression of those ideas as

structured in the book in the form of chapters

and graphics. It would be much the same

for a permaculture educator’s course notes

— the ideas are not the intellectual property

(unless patented). What is, is the way they are

expressed in the notes a teacher distributes to

students, assuming those notes are the original

work of the teacher.

In Australia, all original material is automatically

copyright without the appendage of the ©

logo or registration, though this is not the case in

some other countries. Copyright was intended

as the temporary protection of material and

comes with time limitations.

Copyright — the protection of intellectual

material for the exclusive use by its creator or

those appointed by the creator or to whom

use is licenced — clashes with permaculture’s

Third Ethic of the sharing of resources. The

clash comes in the de-facto attitude of

what we would today call ‘open source’ in

permaculture. The Third Ethic is widely seen to

imply open source.

How does this relate to the structure and

operation of larger scale organisations in

permaculture? It becomes relevant when and

if those organisations create material that could

be seen as their own intellectual property.

Whether and how they permit reuse is where

they have potential conflict with those who

view the Third Ethic as implying de-facto open

source status.

Perhaps the solution for large scale

organisations as well as for those of smaller

scale is to issue material under a Creative

Commons licence that allows a range of reuse

options.


4. Outline of a new model

. . . adop t i ng a s t ruc tu re

f l at te r t han that o f t he

common h ie ra rch i ca l

mode l wou ld demons t rate

compat i b i l i t y w i th

pe rmacu l tu re ’ s c l a im o f

be ing at t he fo re f ron t o f

deve lop ing cons t ruc t ive

a l te rnat ives. . .

ORGANISATIONS need an operating system

that goes with their legal structure, such as

an incorporated association or a company

limited by guarantee with a membership and

operations governed by a board of directors.

What newer models raise is the possibility less

the doing away with boards and memberships,

the potential for which may be limited by legal

constraints, but the role of such boards and

memberships, how they relate to each other

and how this might be modified to create more

simply-structured and effective organisations.

For any larger permaculture organisation,

adopting a structure flatter than that of

the common hierarchical model would

demonstrate compatibility with permaculture’s

claim of being at the forefront of developing

constructive alternatives and lend those

organisations credibility for trying.

A thought experiment

Adopting a modern organisational structure

implies abandoning the hierarchical model with

its command and control and predominately

top-down, one-way flow of information. Some

critics have described this as a parent > child

relationship, of a organisation issuing edicts with

the expectation that they will be obeyed and

implemented by memberships or employees.

Let’s make a thought experiment... let’s

imaging that one day the management and

interested members of a large organisation

with a regional, state or national focus sit down

and decide to remake itself in a way that is

compliant with its legal responsibilities but that

change its operational methodology.

Here’s what it might look like...

Metastucture The metastructure might be an adaptation of

the federal model.

It might take the form of teams setting

themselves up to perform specific roles, with

these teams communicating with an admin/

coordinating team through people acting in

a liaison role who may or may not be board

members. The role of the board would be not

to define how the teams structure and operate

other than they contribute to the mission of the

organisation and comply with permaculture’s

code of ethics.

Such a model would mimic the natural, evolved

structure of permaculture in Australia, divest

responsibility and initiative to motivated teams,

distribute the work of the organisation nationally

and place less work on the board.

The board or management groupIn contemplating a new organisational model

for larger groups we can ask what the role


of an admin team, board of directors or a

management team should be.

Should it adopt managerialism characterised

by:

a strategic oversight role of maintaining the mm

organisation’s course according to its stated

mission

management of the organisational mm

infrastructure such as finances, membership,

liaison with government and institutions,

management of the legal requirements of

the company

a hierarchical structure in which decisions are mm

made and handed down to the members

and the teams; some may be happy with this

but others would likely see it as effectively

disempowering them and discouraging

initiative; it could risk the loss of participants

where they are interested in a more

democratic culture

a predominantly trickle down effect mm

of mainly a one-way flow of decisional

information and authority from board to

teams and members

the micromanagement of teams including mm

determination and alteration of their roles

with little or no consultation and shared

decision making

validation or veto of initiatives and decisions mm

coming from teams.

Alternatively, the board adopts the model of

the flat, distributed organisation, avoids the

old command and control structure inherent

Decentraised, networked, self-

managing task teams

Management group

Membership

Regular, two-way communication

System boundary—permaculture ethics,

organisational mission

Operational model for larger scale permaculture organisation

Ideas flow into teams from outside sources via weak network links


Teams would:

be linked to the board or management mm

group/admin team by a liaison who may or

may not be a board member and by open,

clear channels of communication; they

would regularly communicate their state of

activity so that the board has a clear image

of what is happening in the teams at any

time

have an open membership and the mm

capacity to recruit people themselves.

The larger organisation would function through

the activity of its teams as active nodes in a

distributed, networked structure. Through this

structure, it would develop a greater capacity

to self-organise.

The teams would be the main implementation

clusters for the organisation’s work.

in hierarchies and adopts an oversight and

coordinating role consisting of:

strategic oversight, maintaining the mm

organisation’s course according to its stated

mission

managing the organisational infrastructure mm

such as finances, membership, liaison with

government and institutions, management of

the legal requirements of the organisation

facilitating the work of the teamsmm

ensuring the work of the teams remains within mm

the ambit of the organisation’s mission and

roles

ensuring teams comply in their operation mm

and work with the ethics of permaculture.

Teams or activity clustersThe work of the organisation is invested in teams

or regional activity clusters that are:

self-initiating — new teams would inform the mm

board of their mission within the ambit of the

organisation’s role, and their intention; where

compliant with the organisation’s strategic

direction, this would be ratified by the board/

admin team

self-organisingmm

self-managingmm

semi-autonomous — capable of mm

independent initiative, operation and

decision making

linked by multipath, open flows of mm

information to improve coordination and

cooperation

have the capacity to communicate widely mm

on their own behalf.

A potential outcome of self-initiation and

self-management within agreed parameters

could be the attracting of the most motivated

people.


it would relate to that structure in terms of

information flow

possession of a mm grand narrative, a story

describing a realistic and achievable set of

goals for the organisation

a mm communications strategy developed

by the communciations specialists in the

organisation and others who may join them

the recognition that tmm he future belongs to small, agile organisations.

A partial indicator of the state of permaculture

participation would be membership numbers

of permaculture organisations. That, though,

doesn’t capture numbers of permaculture

people not participating in permaculture

associations, and that number may be

significant.

We can use the set of requirements formulated

in the book, Brains on Fire, the collective work

of a number of authors, to assess whether

permaculture is well structured as a social

movement. These are:

does permaculture mm reframe the conversation

around sustainability?

do permaculture practitionersmm get buy-in from prospective participants at the first

conversation — do they tell an attractive

story, a narrative, about permaculture?

does permaculture have an mm inspirational leadership? Passionate people who put in

the hard work? A leadership that encourages

participants to adopt its message?

does permaculture have a mm barrier to entry?

Crossing a barrier builds relationships.

does permaculture mm empower people with

knowledge?

5. Requirements of a new structure

. . . p ro t rac ted and

ca re fu l t hough t rathe r

t han p ro t rac ted and

thought l ess ac t i on . . .

ANY NEW INITIATIVE requires protracted and

careful thought rather than protracted and

thoughtless action before launching, to

paraphrase Bill Mollison.

As well as time and board and member support

and participation, among other requirements

to achieve the type of organisation outlined in

this document are:

a mm clear sense of identity for the

organisation... what is it?

a mm clear sense of purpose... what does it want

to do? why does it exist?

a mm clear point of difference to similar

organisations

an mm open, collegiate, collaborative and participatory organisational culture

clear, regular, open mm multipath communications between nodes and

between nodes and board/admin team

a mm friendly welcoming mat for new members

and visitors

a capacity tomm solicit funding

inducement to joinmm including a simple

membership structure for organisations and

individuals seeking membership

openess in decision makingmm including the

polling of members on their preferences

capacity for mm external communications

a mm mental model of how the organisation is

situated in relation to the national structure

of permaculture that has evolved and how


does permaculture have a mm shared ownership? This includes shared leadership

that makes it possible for practitioners to

move it forward. Do people feel free to

comment publicly on permaculture or do

they see that as the exclusive role of people

prominent in it?

does permaculture have a mm powerful identity?

Or is its identity, its self-concept, dilute,

fragmented and ambiguous?

does permaculture mm have a presence both

offline and online?

does permaculture mm make its participants feel important? Does it engender trust between

people in its organisations?

does permaculture mm get results? Does it

offer return of some kind on time, energy,

knowledge, skills and funds invested? Does it

make headway in addressing some injustice?

We can look to the book, The Dragonfly Effect

to see what an organisation needs to achieve

a degree of success. The characteristics

include:

A 1. clear focus. This might be thought of as the

organisation’s mission, its purpose. Having

focus implies that the organisation has only

a single or a limited number of foci so as to

avoid ambiguity and spreading its energy

too widely. A focus includes having a point

of difference to other, similar organisations.

The Pareto Principle, the 80/20 Rule, can be

applied here by thinking about what would

be most important to focus on… what are

those limited number of foci that would yield

the most important outcomes rather than

that larger number that would yield smaller,

less significant results? It’s a question about

return on the organisation’s investment of

skill, knowledge, funds and time.

The organisation has the means to 2. grab attention. Working within the boundaries of

its focus, the organisation takes action of

some sort that is appealing and attractive.

The action and any proposals coming from

it must be relevant, achievable, potentially

effective and maintainable.

Having grabbed people’s attention, the 3.

organisation then engages with those

attracted. There would be many ways to do

this, such as facilitating social connection,

providing education, providing new tools

that make a real difference in people’s lives.

Once again, we can use the Pareto principle

to assess the potentially most beneficial.

Having engaged with those attracted to the mm

organisation’s focus, it is time to take action

on the foci chosen by members.

. . . t he fu tu re be longs to

sma l l , agi l e o rgan i sat i ons

“ ...we will hire the smartest people we can

find and put them in small teams. They will go

into the field with funding and communications

infrastructure behind them, capitalized to find

a place to live and work, and a job to do...

Our company isn’t a project that we pull

together on, it’s a network of like-minded,

cooperating autonomous teams, all of which

are empowered to do whatever they want,

provided that it returns something to our

coffers...

This company isn’t a company anymore:

this company is a network, an approach, a

sensibility... it’s risky doing anything. But

riskiest of all is doing nothing...

That’s what an ecosystem is all about,

creating value for a lot of players.”

...Excerpt fom Makers by Cory Doctorow


Conclusion

. . .we cl i ng too much to

the pas t rathe r t han

l ook ing to a new fu tu re

THIS is a preliminary paper, an ideas paper. It is

presented as the starting point of a discussion

rather than presenting actionable proposals.

Sometimes, we cling too much to the past rather

than looking to a new future. History is instructive

but it doesn’t deal directly with the present or

the future, yet it’s there that our organisations

have to live and it’s there that we make the

decisions that affect our collective future as a

body of practice, as permaculture design.

In offering this outline of ideas to structure

organisations to inhabit that future, I am very

much aware that it is the time availability of

the people who do the work that is the limiting

factor in getting anything done. Clearly, for

some of these ideas to become reality we

would have to stimulate member activity within

an organisation.

It is an axiom of crime investigation that for

something to happen three conditions are

necessary: motivation, opportunity and means.

For any larger scale permaculture organisation,

seeing to the growth of these would be

necessary but quite difficult. To engender

motivation or to take advantage of that

already existing there must be a compelling

reason for people to join and become active

in an organisation. In other words, incentive for

membership. A friendly welcoming mat would

provide the opportunity for membership and

the means would consist of a simple method of

gaining membership.

Yet, that conversation reported at the start

of this publication, if true, suggests that

permaculture is unconsciously moving away

from a participatory structure in which a

larger number worked together to make

things happen. That would be a barrier to

implementing some of the ideas presented

here, but resorting to the managerial model

would likely be equally ineffective, especially

were it to be staffed by volunteers who could

find themselves with a lot of work to do.

In discussing ideas about organisations, it’s

been suggested that voluntarism in Australia is

in decline. I’ve seen no figures for or against this

suggestion, however if true and were a national

representative permaculture organisation to be

born, then some new model might be needed

to avoid volunteer burnout and organisational

overshoot.

Fo r o rgan i sat i ons, a key

p rope r ty today i s agi l i t y. . .

Some organisations in other sectors have come

to the point at which they have reached the

limit of voluntary capacity, yet client or member

expectation is that they continue to offer the

services they provide. They then seek grant

funding to employ staff full or part time, and

while a great deal more can be accomplished

by doing this, grants sooner or later cease to be

offered and the organisation is then left staffless

with, perhaps, a greater volume of work to be

done by volunteers or by reducing their level of

service.

A few have gone on to reorganise as a not-for-

profit social enterprise. This is a viable model


but it can take the organisation far from what

it previously was, often turning it into a service

provider with a more businesslike relationship to

members. It’s difficult to see what a large scale

permaculture organisation would offer by way

of self-financing services that would sustain it.

That question — the question of return on

investment in membership, what members get

for their membership — has come up during

discussions over the future of Permaculture

Australia. To date, it has not been answered.

That’s because it’s a difficult question,

especially for an organisation with limited

financial and volunteer resources. Ideally, those

committed to a good future for permaculture

would see their membership fees as an

investment in the organisation and its work

and not expect anything material in return.

Experience has shown that this attitude is not

universally prevalent in permaculture.

An evolving practice

Behind the ideas presented here is the notion

that permaculture is an evolving practice and

body of knowledge. To be otherwise is to set off

on the road to extinction.

Bodies of knowledge and practice and the

organisations they spawn must evolve to

adapt and survive in a somewhat saturated

public marketplace for ideas and for people’s

attention and allegiance.

For organisations, a key property today is agility.

To be agile is to remain within the capacities of

the organisation, its leadership and its members.

Strategic overshoot leads to extinction by

attrition of the overworked and overwhelmed.

The ideas here might initially take some

thinking about and, was there willingness to

implement them, there would likely be a need

to spend time working out how to introduce,

structure and tweak them. To allow for this it

might be wise for all decisions and policies

to be introduced in beta form, for a limited

time before formal adoption, rejection or

modification. I believe, however, that given

a little time the workload of organisational

governance might diminish.

I think it remains a good idea that permaculture

organisations demonstrate models of doing

things that set a good example, that offer a

true alternative and that reflect its ethos.

“Bu t i f you th i nk o f you rse l f

a s te rra fo rm ing Ea r th , and i f

you th i nk about sus ta inab i l i t y,

t hen you can s ta r t t h i nk ing

about pe rmacu l tu re and what

pe rmacu l tu re rea l ly means. I t ’ s

no t j u s t sus ta inable agr i cu l tu re,

bu t a name fo r a ce r ta in type o f

h i s to ry. . . peop le tend to th i nk o f

u top ia as a pe r fec t end - s tage,

wh i ch i s , by de f i n i t i on , imposs ib l e

and maybe even bad fo r us. And

so maybe i t ’ s be t te r to use a

word l i ke pe rmacu l tu re, wh i ch

no t on ly i ncl udes pe rmanent bu t

a l so pe rmutat i on . Pe rmacu l tu re

sugges ts a ce r ta in k i nd o f obv ious

human goa l , wh i ch i s t hat fu tu re

generat i ons w i l l have at l eas t as

good a p l ace to l ive as what we

have now” ( i n i n te rv i ew) .

Kim Stan ley Rob inson ,

sc ience f i c t i on au tho r and th i nke r.

Vi l l age Homes, Dav i s , Ca l i fo rn i a .


the components of the PERMACULTURE DESIGN SYSTEM

COMMUNITY SYSTEMS

RURAL SYSTEMS

PERSONAL LIFE

SUSTAINABLE URBANISM—

principles

FOOD SYSTEMS PRODUCTION

SYSTEMS principles

participatory democracy

collaborative economy

guaranteed access to basic life needs—food, clean water, shelter, healthcare, personal

security, communications

social enterprise

cooperatives—food, worker, banking etc >

livelihoods

community economy

product access systems

LETS—Local Exchange & Trading System

freeconomy, peer-to-peer exchange

whole farm planning

Holistic Management regenerative

agriculture

participatory governance

role of civic entrepreneur

contributioneffectiveness

freedom of association, belief, action that does not

negatively affect rights of others

self-improvement

constructive

respect

housing

energy, water efficient design

materials choice—Lifecycle Analysisuse of renewble

energies—solar design

integration of landscape, buildings

community involvement in urban development—placemaking approach

cities of opportunity

borrow>use>return rather than

take>make>waste

distributed energy grid

design for cooperation, conviviality

design for third places

sustainable agriculture

regional food economies

community food systems

home food gardening

food cooperatives, community gardens, community supported agriculture

affordable resource efficient retrofit of existing

housing stock

new models of access

co-housing & ecovillages

agroecology

cradle-to-cradle produciton

product design

biomimicry

peer-to-peer hire

Conceptual map of the permaculture design system

A set of interacting components producing combined outcomes greater than any of the components by themselves.

create collaborate make sharedesign

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No Derivative Works 2.5

Australia License. http://creativecommons.org

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and community organisations may reproduce and distribute this brochure under

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Please inform us if you reuse the brochure: [email protected]

Russ Grayson, Sydney, Autumn 2013

Remaking Our Organisations

Education

Transcript of Remaking Our Organisations